Reputation Management For Startups

Reputation Risk is one of the most commonly overlooked business risk by startups. Reputation management is key to your business and its long term success. Your business and personal reputation should and must be managed at all times.

Risk when managed well insures your business from unforeseeable circumstances. Popular business risks includes financial, strategic and operational risk. Solvency II addresses risk assessment and management.

In as much as your business tries to focus on increasing sales, your reputation is a risk you cannot overlook. Many companies have damaged reputations it took years to build. Building reputation begins the moment you open your doors for business.You first interaction with early customers or clients can leave a positive or negative impression about your business.

New startups gain some level of reputation with written or spoken statement endorsements from satisfied customers. For optimal and effective results, most startups in their early stages concentrate on quality service with little or no emphasis on price.

It is important that as a business you claim or create business accounts in various common blogging platforms and social media networks.These online accounts will be the platforms you can use to share your business products, services, support and customer services and future releases or updates. These accounts grow with time and online users identity with them as your business grows.

The current increase in the use of social and new media across the world has made it easier for prospective clients to reach your customers for information about your product or service. It is important to sign up with online products that make it easier to track your company’s brand across various platforms and respond to concerns, suggestions and complaints before they escalate and ruin the reputation you are building for your business.

It is now not enough to just sign up for a Twitter account or create a Facebook Page, you should employ or delegate people in your business who can monitor online conversations about your brand and participate to address all known concerns.

Finally, it is important that your startup or business maintain a social media policy. This will ensure that your employees are aware of how their social media use can have both positive and negative impact on the company. You should specify and educate your employees about the kind of information they should share and especially when they should share them with the public.

Founding Editor @Alltopstartups, Columnist @Inc. Magazine and Curator at Postanly (his free weekly digest of the best life and career improvement posts on the web). Subscribe for free. Check out his books on Amazon.